


Tribulations of the New Gerbil

by bioluminesce



Category: Control (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-12 21:14:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29640771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bioluminesce/pseuds/bioluminesce
Summary: “Hello? Are you still in there?”“An easy peach.” The alien’s voice was chipper.“Oh, good,” Jesse said. “I know it’s been a while but … do you maybe … need anything? Want to come out of there?”
Comments: 2
Kudos: 32





	Tribulations of the New Gerbil

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Seasidh521](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seasidh521/gifts).



> Prompt from seasidhe: A frustrated Jesse finds that Fra's advice makes as much sense as anything else in the Bureau. When Emily plans to move it, Jesse starts figuring out where her new emotional support paranatural entity really belongs.

Jesse Faden sat down on the moon dust. Propping her elbows on her knees cued a wide swath of dull but deep pain across her side. One of Hartman’s swipes had gotten her there, unnaturally sharp fingernails curving around her, distorted muscle squeezing. Now, as she looked down at her empty hands in the cavernous room, she suspected the dosage of some of the House’s precious few pain pills had worn off.

_I love this place. I really do. But I could do with one or two fewer things inside trying to kill me._

Moon dust made gray speckles over a purpling bruise on the meat of her thumb. She tapped at it as she looked around the gray walls of the Fra Mauro AWE site. She hadn’t come back here just to dwell: the area was still dangerous enough that she’d volunteered herself to go in before any Rangers did. Soon, the AWE area would be secured. The sight of the lunar lander sitting incongruously in the middle of a storage room still made her breath catch. The House certainly had a sense of the dramatic …

And the FBC, she thought as she stood up and circled the central stage, had its own skewed sense of what was appropriate. Take the alien, for example. An alien, bona fide, not like the aluminum flying saucers on roadsides. The person called Fra, who had been interrogated as harshly as her brother. Had Dylan been treated the same way? Jesse liked to imagine Darling might have softened such a blow, but she couldn’t know. Things under previous directors had seemed even harsher than they were now.

This introspection brought Jesse to the door of the shelter. She straightened the paranaturally immaculate collar of her suit. It was time to do some work. She had responsibilities as director to everyone in the house. And that included Fra. Would Fra need an HRA to go into the other departments? Could the Hiss touch it? Could that strange darkness? 

Only one way to find out. 

“Hello? Are you still in there?”

“An easy peach.” The alien’s voice was chipper.

“Oh, good,” Jesse said. “I know it’s been a while but … do you maybe … need anything? Want to come out of there?”

Maybe that wasn’t the safest idea. Reaching for Polaris, Jesse didn’t get the impression of any danger. Her guiding star was curious. Jesse hadn’t fully expected to offer freedom for the prisoner herself. But standing right in front of it, she couldn’t _deny_ it either. Fra was trapped, just like Jesse and Dylan were in their own ways.

“Equal boating gargle.”

_It sounds pretty happy …_

“Lady?” Fra said, with a lilt on the end that invited an answer. _How are you?_ Jesse mentally translated. Sometimes she almost felt like she could understand, but then it would throw in a _jelly_ and they’d be back to the beginning …

“I’m …” Jesse’s effort to shrug hurt her ribs and her hands. “I’m tired. I love this place, but it’s weird, and it hurts, and I’m the one who’ll get hurt the _least_ , so I go out and explore.”

“Weasel berry,” said Fra sympathetically.

“And I want to talk to Emily and Dylan about it, but Emily will worry too much, both as a friend and an employee. Let’s not even get started on that. Or maybe not worry … she’ll want to do something about it, to come down here and dedicate all that focus and passion on solving the problems. When it’s not really a problem that can solve. It’s just what being director is. And Dylan is still …” _In a coma._ “Not talking. So, thanks, I guess. For talking and not giving me any advice that makes _less_ sense than anything else in here.”

Fra was quiet. Again Jesse looked around the industrial-museum moonscape of the room. Something hummed in the distance, some strange arm of the power plant pumping light down here.

Just as Jesse was considering how she might ask the question of Fra’s release from another direction, it spoke again, in a commanding tone she hadn’t heard since she’d returned the “head” to it. “Hey, lady. Camp round bless.”

“Huh?”

A clanking sound came through the door, like the empty spacesuit that was Fra was moving objects around inside the shelter. “Camp. Round. Bless.”

The words almost made sense. They were so close. And Fra clearly understood basically how a sentence was supposed to work. Not all the words meant anything literally. But maybe some of them did. _Round?_ Jesse looked over her shoulder.

That was apparently what she had been supposed to do. Because Fra kept talking — more words than she had ever heard out of it before. It told a story, in nonsense and inflection. In long, sweeping words and choppy, angry ones. The whole time, Jesse watched the lunar lander, that impossible thing in the room with her, and thought maybe Fra was telling her the story of how it came to Earth, why it had joined the astronauts, why it had convinced them there had been four people on the mission instead of three all along. She couldn’t understand a word of it, but she got the sense of distant, cold places.

Since she couldn’t understand the words, she found herself tuning them out and falling into her own memories. She had seen the pocked face of the moon from so many places herself — mountains, plains, cities, and all the time lonely, looking for her brother, never even considering she could make friends until she found him. 

Finally Fra stopped, with a clipped, unceremonious “…flag loose buffalo.”

“Do you want to go back there?” Jesse said finally, her voice muffled where she had propped her chin against her hand.

“Eggshell!”

This word was emphatic, but Jesse couldn’t tell whether it was a yes or a no.

“Look,” Jesse said. “If you want to come out, you can.” She checked; the shelter wasn’t locked. “I bet we can figure out talking to you. This has been nice. But if you need anything …” she stood up to go, brushed moon dust off her perfectly creased pants. “I think you’ll find a way to let me know.” _Most things in the House do._

“Clock total!” said Fra cheerily, with the distinct sense of waving goodbye.

* * *

The re-exploration of the Investigations Sector proceeded relatively smoothly. There simply weren’t enough people left in the Bureau to hold the whole area, but the darkness there was novel enough that Emily Pope brought a team in. Rangers and researchers milled around Fra Mauro.

Jesse lingered at the doorway, occasionally reaching out to Polaris in case she might warn about any Hiss activity.

Instead, Emily walked rapidly over, her ever-present clipboard under her arm. “After you took care of the Hartman entity, things have been pretty quiet around here. We’d like to keep it that way. I think if we move the entity’s shelter to one of the empty storage warehouses in the Foundation …”

“No.” Jesse’s response came quicker and more curt than she expected.

To Emily’s credit, she understood. “Oh, I don’t mean we lock it away. Just consolidate a bit …”

“It’s a living being, Emily. We’ll let it go where it wants … if it can figure out how to tell us.”

“But surely it’s safer if …”

“They said a lot of things were safer if Dylan was kept locked up, too.”

The awkward silence was deafening. Emily’s knuckles were white where she clutched the clipboard. But both women took a deep breath at the same time, starting to say something like _I’m sorry_ or _Dylan is different_ , and caught each other doing it. Jesse smiled. “I know you mean well. The door is open. Station someone here to watch Fra, if you want. But nothing else.”

“As your employee … yes ma’am. As your friend …” Emily hesitated. “I do really want to know what that thing … person … is saying.”

_Even her friendship is full of curiosity. It’s nice._

“I trust you. Just … don’t move it, okay?”

“One thing’s for sure. We may be about to find out whether Fra needs an HRA.”

* * *

Jesse didn’t sleep well that night. The couch in the director’s office wasn’t comfortable, was hardly long enough for her. And she kept having strange dreams, or waking up, and seeing an abalone shell, nacreous and craggy, in the middle of the carpet.

Finally, she was certain she was really awake. Someone was shouting outside the door. Tiny sounds might have been ineffectual knocks on the thick door.

Jesse stood up blearily and tied her hair up on the way to the door.

Emily stood outside. Whatever time it was — it was so hard to tell in the House — she looked wide awake. “Sorry to wake you, Jesse. So, you told me not to move the Fra Mauro entity, and I didn’t. But … it’s gone.”

Jesse looked back at the shell. It hadn’t been a dream. For its small size it seemed to have disproportionate weight in the room.

“I got a weird message this morning," Jesse said. "Pretty sure it’s telling me where to find Fra.”

“Where?” Emily raised an eyebrow. 

“Well, it's funny you ask. It's in the Foundation, after all.”

* * *

The bare floor of the cave reminded Jesse of the surface of the Moon. It crunched softly under her and Emily’s boots. In front of them, the black surface of the Nail contrasted both with the rough rock and the regimented pillars of the Foundation. Although the Foundation base camp was no longer a priority, a few Rangers still stationed down here sat around the radio, abruptly standing up when they saw the director pass by.

Once they were out of earshot but not quite at the cliff edge, Jesse touched Emily’s arm. “Hey, I just want to be clear. The goal here is to get Fra back, to keep it safe. But not to study it or control it. Just to … rescue it if it needs to be rescued.”

“I admit I don’t quite understand,” Emily said. “But if you have a rapport with it, that will probably help. Even if we don’t know where to find it.”

“I might.” Jesse took the half shell of the abalone from the back pocket of her suit. She couldn’t recall whether the suit had had a back pocket yesterday.

At the side of the cliff, the weird wind blowing between the caves and the columns in the distance sounded even lower pitched and more severe. Jesse pitched the shell out over the cliff, trying to avoid the ledges meandering below it.

 _Abalone_ had been one of the random words the Former had said to her when she had taken its side against the Board in the Foundation. Whether it had a reason to talk to her or knew where Fra was, it was a start.

A few seconds past, long enough for her to look back at Emily questioningly. _Any suggestions?_ stalled at the tip of her tongue.

Suddenly, Jesse's sense of space distorted. She might have moved back toward the base camp or flown out above the empty air, but couldn’t tell which. Pretty normal for how her days had been lately, really.

 _This is part of the answer, isn’t it?_ Now she reached out to Polaris, who radiated _calm._ No need to panic, then. Jesse struggled to focus her blurring vision on the near/far cliff edge. She was still standing on the ground, could still feel the dust under her boots. But everything was stretched. Not like the Hiss. Like a highway late at night, when you've been on the bus too long. 

Suddenly, she was overhearing a conversation between Fra and the Former. The Former hung upside-down from a column, bug-like legs dangling. The spacesuit stood on a narrow ledge next to it, a rhythm that was not breathing rippling up and down the heavy surface in a way that indicated both something was alive in there and that its body, if it had one, was not human. Jesse, dizzily, still couldn't quite tell where she was standing in relation to them, but she saw them both from the side. 

_Former. It was an ally once, but it hits hard. It ate Phillip … or did something else that killed him … and he was counting on me. Trusting the Former would be bad. It would be irresponsible for a director to do._

_So why do I still like it more than the Board?_

The Former's static-filled voice boomed. < Welcome @#$@# Directory @%@! Traveler @#$@ Lost >

“Plant shine abacus,” Fra said defensively. _I’m not lost!_ Jesse mentally translated. Former was more comprehensible than Fra after all.

< Fire @#$! Cave @#$@ Protect >

Fra mumbled something, now sounding a bit more < Lost >. It glanced over at Jesse and undulated slightly in her direction, like a wave from someone who wasn’t fully paying attention to her.

< New $%@% Gerbil @#$! Bring #$@ Panini >

The Former’s light swung toward Jesse. As it did, the vision or distortion began to fade. Jesse’s sense of distance warped even further.

“It reminds me of the Moon, too,” she thought she heard Fra say.

The distortion ended, the world snapping back into place. Emily and Fra both stood behind her, the space suit still slowly rippling.

Jesse took a deep breath. The conversation had gone by quickly, but had been full of pieces she felt she could fit together. 

“I think …” Jesse rubbed her forehead, trying to clear her thoughts. “I think the Former told Fra I’d take care of it.”

“Flense candle,” said Fra matter-of-factly.

Jesse noticed the tightness in Emily’s jaw and realized trying to make everybody happy here was exactly the sort of work she was going to have to become good at as director. That and being okay with when some of her staff were unhappy, but making sure the Bureau wasn’t actually committing any human rights violations at the time.

 _Keep cool, Polaris._ Sometimes, Jesse pretended she was reassuring her inner entity when she was really reassuring herself.

“Fra, you need to go back to the lunar lander. That’s your department, right? If you want to go somewhere else we have to figure out how to talk about it. You’re not a prison here, but we can’t let anyone out of the House right now. Not us, not you, not anyone.” _Maybe the Former, of all people, can help._

“Leaf,” said Fra accusingly, with the same irritable tolerance it had handled her early attempts to find its helmet, and disappeared. Jesse realized she would miss it.

“This is hard,” Jesse said.

“… Fascinating,” Emily said, clearly having hope Jesse would end her sentence in the same way, then gave Jesse a thin, bright smile.

Jesse took a deep breath. “Emily? You’re really okay with Fra being free?”

The scientist nodded. Whatever she had seen when the world had distorted, she had never dropped her clipboard. “I admit, it’s not usual protocol. But with the House in lockdown, none of us can get out anyway, not to mention to the Moon.”

_Always practical._

“And, like you said, we’re trying not to be an agency that imprisons _people_ , here. Fra certainly doesn’t seem to be an object.”

“Thanks, Emily.”

The two of them made their way back up through the caverns toward the House proper, Jesse helping Emily over rough terrain and treacherous open vents. She still wasn’t sure Fra and the Former were _allies_ — the Former was too powerful to be trusted, and Fra’s petulance put it firmly in the category of _coworker with a little too much personality._ But neither of them were experiments. Dylan wasn’t an experiment. Jesse wouldn’t be.

Just before she pressed the elevator buttons to go back to Executive she turned, struck by an insistent thought she knew right away was paranatural. She paused with her hand raised, clawed muscles dimly aching. Only she and Emily were in the elevator. But she had been struck with the idea: _when we arrived in the Foundation, weren’t there three of us …?_


End file.
